By the time John Brown hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper’s Ferry, Northern abolitionists had made him a holy martyr” in their campaign against Southern slave owners. This Northern hatred for Southerners long predated their objections to slavery. They were convinced that New England, whose spokesmen had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern slavocrats” like Thomas Jefferson. This malevolent envy exacerbated the South’s greatest fear: a race war. Jefferson’s cry, We are truly to be pitied,” summed up their dread. For decades, extremists in both regions flung insults and threats, creating intractable enmities. By 1861, only a civil war that would kill a million men could save the Union. Views: 55
From the series that inspired the hit London Weekend Television sitcom Bless Me, Father: St. Jude's parish is as lively as ever After finishing his first year at St. Jude's, Father Neil finally feels as if he has his feet firmly planted underneath himself. His rapport with Father Duddleswell is as strong as ever, and even Mrs. Pring is showing him a softer side. Things are looking up for this young curate. But St. Jude's is still full of surprises. In this uproarious installment of Neil Boyd's semiautobiographical series, the clergy of St. Jude's is confronted with all manner of crisis: personal, political, and cricket-related. There is the dilemma of Dr. Daley, whose drinking is causing his health to deteriorate but who worries that becoming a teetotaler will ruin his personality. Then there are the animals overrunning the church, much to Father Duddleswell's chagrin, as a new donkey is followed by a fresh litter of kittens. Sharp... Views: 55
Science Fiction/Dark Fantasy. 29990 words long. First published in 2009, 2009 Views: 54
Charlotte Booth loves her father and the home they share, which is set high up in the limestone escarpments of Crummockdale. But when a new businessman in the form of Joseph Dawson enters their lives, both Charlotte and her father decide he's the man for her and, within six months, Charlotte marries the dashing mill owner from Accrington.Then a young mill worker is found dead in the swollen River Ribble. With Joseph's business nearly bankrupt, it becomes apparent that all is not as it seems and Joseph is not the man he pretends to be. Heavily pregnant, penniless and heartbroken, Charlotte is forced to face the reality that life may never be the same again . . . Views: 54
I'm George and I just found out that my wife has been having sex with another man. The curious thing is that she is very conventional and thinks cheating is wrong. But in her black and white world, and with her 'women are never wrong' mindset, she knows that somehow I am to blame. My attempts to open our marriage have always fallen on deaf ears, but now things are getting interesting. Views: 54
For years, Zoran Zivkovic has awed, entertained, and tantalized the world of fantastic literature with his ingenious and moving fabulations, tales of ordinary, often isolated people facing and being transfigured by the strange, the improbable. Logic and illogic meet head-on in Zivkovic's stories, and the outcome is always deeply memorable. Now, for the first time, Impossible Stories assembles between a single set of covers five of the author's distinguished story-cycles, as well as the stand-alone 'The Telephone': twenty-nine stories in all. In Impossible Stories you will find: Time Gifts: A mysterious visitor comes to see three desperate human beings across the ages: an astronomer, a paleolinguist, and an old watch-maker; he has a unique but ambiguous time-gift for each one of them. His true identity is known only to an insane artist locked up in her asylum studio. But who would believe an artist in this world, even if she were not insane? Impossible Encounters: Six strangely related stories about encounters that could or should never have happened. Including conversations with God and the Devil, with an alien and one's older self; and the answer to the enigma: where do off-duty story characters go? Seven Touches of Music: Seven stories about moments of divine revelation through music, which leave no mark beyond the ephemeral instant of their perception. Among the remarkable epiphanies witnessed are an old widower glimpsing an alternate existence, a librarian dreaming the death of all knowledge, and an artist's rendering of inscrutable alien messages. The Library: A cycle of six thematically linked stories, droll renditions of the nightmares ensuing upon misplaced, or (of course) excessive, bibliophilia. A writer encounters a website where all his possible future books are on display; a lonely man faces an infinite flow of hardback books through his mailbox; a connoisseur of hardcovers strives to expel a lone paperback from his collection... Steps Through the Mist: Five women of various ages face, each in her own way, what seems to be the deterministic trap of Fate. A schoolteacher, a fortune-teller, a young woman on a skiing holiday, an inflexible old spinster, a girl who can collapse reality into any shape: when another dreams you, or controls you, or invests you with godlike power, can there be any escape, ever? Views: 54
The 23 essays (or "love songs") that make up the now classic volume Air Guitar trawl a "vast, invisible underground empire" of pleasure, through record stores, honky-tonks, art galleries, jazz clubs, cocktail lounges, surf shops and hot-rod stores, as restlessly on the move as the America they depict. Air Guitar pioneered a kind of plain-talking in cultural criticism, willingly subjective and always candid and direct. A valuable reading tool for art lovers, neophytes, students and teachers alike, Hickey's book—now in its third edition—has galvanized a generation of art lovers, with new takes on Norman Rockwell, Robert Mapplethorpe, Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol and Perry Mason. In June 2009, Newsweek voted Air Guitar one of the top 50 books that "open a window on the times we live in, whether they deal directly with the issues of today or simply help us see ourselves in new and surprising ways," and described the book as "a seamless blend of... Views: 54
Continue your love affair with the Thompson family in this hot and hilarious new romantic comedy from New York Times Bestselling author Carey Heywood!Paige Sullivan's life is a train wreck. In a matter of months she lost her business, her swanky apartment, and her big city life. Now she's stuck in Nowhere, New Hampshire, sleeping on her mom's couch. If that wasn't bad enough, she's forced to do odd jobs for money. She has a plan though, and once she's saved enough, she's out of there. That is, as long as she doesn't murder her sexy new employer first.Asher Thompson is the ruggedly handsome hermit of the Thompson clan. Tall, ridiculously sexy despite his beard, and annoyingly aloof, his main concern is his privacy. He fills his days with his work as a carpenter and the peaceful solitude of his lake house. A peaceful solitude that vanished the moment Paige Sullivan stormed into his life, hell-bent on driving him... Views: 54
